The Christmas Album is finished in Ottawa, and the Family, minus Ian, returns to the "A" House. They bring with them the last of their belongings that have been in Ottawa storage for 11 years, including the Carl Orff instruments that Margaret and Leslie had used as music teachers before the Huggett Family began. When the Huggett Family years end, Leslie and Margaret will find a suitable location to set up a new teaching studio.

Rehearsals for the upcoming season get underway. Ian's musical ability on the viols, krumhorns, recorders, and viola is sorely missed, and much new music needs rearranging. New publicity shots and posters are also needed.

The new repertoire is broken in during a week of concerts for Hank Rennick in Lennox and Addington schools. This is followed by another visit to Quebec City, and Ontario shows in Walkerton, Elliot Lake, Haileybury, Orangeville, Tillsonburg, and Dundalk. Here, the organizers are very proud of their newly restored opera house, one of many refurbished heritage buildings in which the Huggetts have played.

Margaret's great uncles, Sid and Reg Stokes, were vaudeville artists. After the First World War. They had worked their way across Canada to Vancouver and then to Los Angeles, performing in the same Canadian towns now visited by the Huggett Family 60 years later. "I remember they came back to England right after the Second world war and gave my sister and me five pounds each, which was a fortune in those days. I wonder how many of our venues are following their footsteps?" muses Margaret.

In November, the Huggetts prepare for their Christmas tour for Overture Concerts. Margaret recalls, "We fly to Dryden, a logging town, apparently dead center between Canada's east and west coasts, for our first show. Since there's no suitable vehicle here for us to rent, it has been arranged that someone will drive us to Kenora, where we will pick up a rental van. However, the driver swerves from side to side, and we all keep our fingers crossed and note not to get into this arrangement again. Next, we play a matinee for the Mennonite community in Winkler. Here, we're requested not to dance. Perhaps La Volta, originally danced by Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester, is too indecent! 

That evening, an hour's drive away, The King's Singers, including our friend and vocal coach from London, Brian Kay, are performing in Winnipeg. Brian, who sings bass, has arranged excellent seats for us and an invite to the reception afterward." 

Andrew adds, "When I was in my late teens, the Family and I attended a party at Brian's London home. I was sitting on the floor talking to a fellow who introduced himself as Donald Swan. When I asked him what he did, he said that he wrote musical theatre. I innocently asked him if it was possible to make a living doing that. To which he replied yes. At the time, I didn't know of Flanders and Swan, Britain's most successful post-war writing team of comic songs and operettas. Brian Kay thought the whole thing hilarious, and I had hoped he'd forgotten it by the time we met up six years later in Winnipeg - but no, he had not. Much to my chagrin, the first thing out of his mouth was. "Hello, Andrew! Nice to see you again. Hey, do you remember that time at my house when you met Donald Swan?"

There are seven more concerts in Saskatchewan, including Swift Current, the location of one of their first shows while on tour 11 years ago. Then, another seven shows in Alberta. In Brooks, the Huggetts are told that the Pipeline Workers Convention has taken over their hotel booking. They find alternative lodgings in a Motel a couple hundred yards from a massive slaughterhouse. The overwhelming stench, locally referred to as "the smell of money," requires the Huggetts to hold their breath while unloading the van to avoid gagging or worse. 

The next afternoon the Family plays in the friendly town of Nelson, a matinee followed by a fine Sunday dinner at the sponsor's home. There are a further seven concerts in BC before they fly from Fort Nelson to Cassiar. This now-closed asbestos mine was one of the most isolated communities on the tour. It is surrounded by impassible mountains on three sides and hemmed in by a gigantic slag heap that looms over the airstrip on the fourth. Because of the mountains, dangerous downdrafts occur regularly and without warning making it one of the most dangerous landing sites in the country. Upon landing, the relieved sponsor says to the unaware Huggetts, "I'm so glad you made it safely. The last plane ended up in the ditch!" Here, everybody is housed in a mobile home, including the Huggetts. The company keeps the mostly Yugoslavian miners happy by providing gourmet meals with steaks galore and a french pastry chef who creates exquisite desserts - all thoroughly enjoyed by the Huggetts, too! 

Another three concerts and then Clearwater, where there is an after-concert reception to which the Huggetts are strangely not invited. Seven more concerts, including Banff, and then an 800 km Drive in -30 degree weather to recently established Fort McMurray, 40 years later, the hub of the Alberta oil industry. The isolated road is dead straight without a single gas station or truck stop for the last 400km. The next day, happy the van is holding up, the Huggetts drive a snowy 1000 kilometers south to North Battleford and then Saskatoon. Margaret's father loved the names Saskatoon and Moose Jaw and would enjoy rolling them off his tongue amid peels of laughter. Finally, the Huggetts fly back to Toronto and a final evening concert in Oakville, from where they drive home for Christmas.